


Lost & Parted Love

by took_skye



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Allerdale Hall, Angst, Attempted Murder, Biting, Blood Kink, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Friends, Dark, Erotica, F/M, Ghost Sex, Lost Love, Masturbation, Murder Family, Rough Sex, Serial Killers, Smut, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 00:23:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16439657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/took_skye/pseuds/took_skye
Summary: “Don’t ever marry someone you love.”





	1. Lost Love

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after Thomas and Lucille arrived in America with the intention of Thomas marrying Eunice McMichael, but prior to him meeting Edith. It began as a prompt from a friend on Tumblr [here](https://wickednerdery.tumblr.com/post/174892085934/sir-thomas-sharpe-idea-being-a-childhood-friend)

You’d not spoken face to face in more than twenty years, but he was certain enough that he’d dashed after you on the street. He called out formerly to start, then informally as the fear of missing you grew. When you finally paused, turned, he broke into a breathless smile.

“Thomas?” You grinned back, hiked dress slightly to better run over. “Little Thomas Sharpe!” You laughed as you playfully fell into his arms. Thomas always gave the best hugs; he clung like you meant the world to him. You suspected, in that moment, whoever he hugged truly did. “My, how you’ve grown.” You leaned back to admire the strapping man; such a change from the scrawny boy you’d known as a child.

“You’re most gracious,” he blushed out, took your arm to continue on. It was unseemly to just stand in the street hugging. “It seems almost fated I should finally see you again, here…now.”

“Why is that, Thomas?”

He hesitated, then dismissed with a smile. “No reason.”

A wickedly knowing smile spread across your lips. “Is Lucille with you?”

“She’s at the hotel, recuperating from the journey,” he confessed. Lucille hated to travel, she hated traveling across the ocean to America all the more it seemed.

“Will she be doing so throughout the evening?”

“I imagine.”

You stopped, turned to him. “Join me for dinner tonight. Just the two of us so that we may catch up and you may speak freely.”

“I always speak freely.”

“Thomas,” you scolded gently, to which he dropped eyes. You pecked his cheek. “I’ll have one of my people send you the address and time…do not bring Lucille. Not tonight.”

Lucille and you got on well enough, continued to exchange letters across the years just as you and Thomas had, but tonight you only wanted him. There was a delicacy about him, a way of caring more than he should for what he was capable of and something in it made you want to indulge. Help, counsel…Warn him, perhaps.

*** 

Servants dismissed for the evening it truly was only Thomas and you for dinner, then pastries and warm milk by the fire. For a period you both sat in silence, taking each other in as you sat opposite. He admired the womanly curves you’d developed, the delicate hands and face you’d held onto. Oh how he’d missed you, he hadn’t even realized until he saw you again. The bond you’d shared was unusual, in part because it’d always allowed for Lucille. You and she could easily enjoy placing poor creatures into the suffocation jars just as you and he could enjoy the trinkets he made - some beautiful, some horrifically so.

“I should have married you.” Thomas spoke with great seriousness. “Things would have been so different if I had.”

“Would they?” You questioned gently as you moved to stand behind him. “We are too similar and too different both, dear Thomas.” Your hands went into his hair, raked through raven locks gently before leaning down to his ear. “We would not survive each other.” It was meant as a tease, a brush against the truth of it all - neither of your spouses ever survived.

“I can’t keep doing this…” your name came plaintively from his lips. “The marriages, the…the things Lucille and I do. Each time I feel my soul poisoned as well. I want…I want to stop.” He wanted a life beyond, after, Allerdale Hall. He wanted love and happiness; peace of mind, body, and soul. He never felt it in his childhood home and each year there was another torture.

“Lucille will never allow it.” You set lips to his forehead, sighed. You knew what would have to be done for Thomas to be freed, but it was not something he could ever do. He loved his sister too much; she would assuredly end his life before he would ever end hers. You slipped hands around, undid the cravat and top buttons of his shirt. “I could handle it, if you wish.” It came as a whisper, a conspiracy begun.

Thomas’ eyes went wide, then closed as he dropped his head into a shake. “No, no, I….I couldn’t do that, ask you to do that. I’ll find another way.”

You sighed, knowing he would not, but it was pointless to try and convince him otherwise. Thomas, the eternal optimist…foolishly so. “Promise me something, Thomas.”

“Anything.”

Always so eager to please, to be loved…It caused a sad smile to hit your lips. “Don’t ever marry someone you love.” He grew confused. You moved around to face him, dropped to your knees with hands on his. “Promise me. Please.” Because, if he were ever to marry for love, it’d be the end of him. The end of everything.

“I promise.”

But there was no relief in his words; he was lying, you knew it. Not intentionally, but nevertheless. “Make love to me, Thomas.” In memory of your shared past, in honor of the future neither of you would ever have.

He stood, pulled you into him. Into a mouth as greedy as yours, a kiss as passionate. Deft fingers pulled pins from your hair, which fell down shoulders and back in soft curls. You remembered this; the masculine smell of him and those soft growling moans that vibrated across lips.

You opened first, tongue sought his as you worked to strip him of coat and vest. You gasped as he roughly undid the lacing of your corseted dress, groaned when teeth seized upon your throat. Your hands tore through his shirt, worked fast on trousers until his breath caught in a growl as you took him in hand.

Thomas’s teeth pinched your flesh, then pulled off and licked the blood that trickled out. He sat, pulled you with him. Your dress split easily under his strength, exposing your sex to the heat of the fire. Of him. His kiss turned soft, drawn out with your collective moans, as fingers brushed your cheek, jaw, the blood across your neck. “I will never marry you,” he stated in earnest. He loved you, more than he’d thought. More than Lucille or you could realize.

“I love you too, Thomas.” And you meant it, more than you’d thought possible with your scarred-black heart. You reignited the kiss, a softer and slower one. One you’d never dared give him in Lucille’s presence.

A hand slipped around to your backside, gripped and guided you across his lap. You rolled hips, elicited low groans of distinct arousal from him. His other hand took hold of his cock, moved it between the lips of your sex, nudged clit with his tip. You shuddered each time, juices releasing to slicken his length. Thomas watched your face in the firelight, the sheen of sweat giving you both a devilish and angelic look in turn. Mouth agape, eyes fluttering…this was something he could never close his eyes too.

“Let me in…” your whisper is moaned, begged, as sparks fly throughout your body. You needed to feel him, feel that fullness and sense of home he’d always brought you in younger years. Those things you’d never felt with another.

There was only a nodded reply before you both shifted for him to enter. His eyes fluttered close, he steadied you to relish the feel. You weren’t home to him, you were something better. A respite that welcomed without expectation, an acceptance that he found nowhere else…not even with Lucille. Thomas let your name slip from his lips as tears slipped from his eyes. His life, his world, could have been so very different.

“Open your eyes, Thomas,” you requested gently. He looked so much the little boy you remembered; soft and sweet and so very alone. Desperate for approval, love, without conditions. You would give him that, even if only for tonight. The request was repeated between kisses until he finally looked up at you. You kissed the tears away, stroked his face, as you began to rock gently across his lap.

Fingers worked at your dress until you were free from the corset, your breasts fully exposed. Thomas lowered his head, kissed the tops and dipped tongue into cleavage. He brushed the backs of his knuckles down the sides of your chest, pressed flesh together and inhaled the scent of you and your perfume.

The warmth of his mouth caused a gasp, his suckle a groan. A hand slid down, found your clit, encircled and pressed and teased. Whatever attention his tongue gave your nipples, Thomas’ fingers copied between your thighs. You pressed in, encouraged, as arms wrapped around his neck. You bit shoulder, licked neck, crooned into his ear not to stop. His other hand gripped your ass, encouraged your increase in speed.

You moved faster, muscles began to twitch, as you burned up. “T-T-Thomas…” you begged for something you could not fathom. A closeness nigh unattainable for a woman such as you. Your cunt began to batter across his length as he let out his own fevered groan.

He held you closer, tighter, pinched a nipple between his teeth so that you screamed in the pleasurable pain of it. His eyes shut as nails drew blood across his back, as your teeth pierced in the same part of his throat as his teeth had yours. His cock pulsed, swelled, as he forced you still, spread wide across his lap. He pulled out just moments before his release. The heat of his cum spattered groin and thighs, coated his own fingers as his attention to your clit turned furious.

Your body fought itself, tried to escape the intense sensations just as it attempted to grind into it. Your orgasm blazed, your entire body tensed so that you were nearly able to stand up even as Thomas held you down. You collapsed forward, into Thomas’ arms with head over his shoulder. Juices trickled down inner thighs, stained his trousers and dripped to the floor.

He clung to you as you did him. His lips slid across bloodied sweat-covered shoulders, fingers smoothed dampened hair along your back. Your fingers lazily spread blood between his shoulder-blades.

“May I stay?” He requested softly, nervous of rejection.

You lapped at the crimson trail you’d left on his neck. “Please.”


	2. Parted Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The perfect parting gift.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This piece occurs some time after the death of Thomas and Lucille with Allerdale Hall continuing to folow to ruin.

The moment you set foot on the property your travel boots turn red. Not the shade of fresh blood, but blood found in long-dead creatures. With an annoyed breath you unstick yourself from the clotted Earth and carry on towards the house. It looks all the worse for its years, blackened with rot of wood and soul. Whatever light it may have had centuries ago is long gone, it’s just decaying stone now.

“Madame!” The carriage driver goes to get down. “Perhaps I should go with you.”

“Nonsense,” you smile back pleasantly, letting red and black crawl up your dress. “There’s no one alive left to hurt me.”

“But this place, Madame. They say it is -”

“Haunted? Cursed?” You laugh. “Do not fret yourself with the dead, my friend, the danger always lies with the living.”

You leave him with that, carry on into Allerdale Hall. It’s red. Red all over. Sunken in, drowning in its own lifeblood. The black moths have taken over, but you merely bat them away as they greet you like an old friend. You’ve no trust or patience for the elevator - always a temperamental thing, once delivering you and Lucille right into the brutal hands of her father…even he’d struck you more than once on that occasion.

The shattered banister catches your eye, causes a pause as you inspect the dried blood coating spikes of wood. The girl must’ve hit hard; Lucille must’ve cursed that it wasn’t her head that struck. Without further detour you carry yourself up the many stairs, down the creaking halls, to the nursery.

It’d been small when you were a child, it’s smaller still now. You remember how you and Lucille huddled in a corner, giggling as your latest capture struggled to breathe in its jar. Lucille would take your hand as, with morbid fascination, you watched the last moments of another thing’s life. Sometimes she would brush a hand across your ankle or knee, always thinking herself so clever even though it was you who allowed it.

Thomas was also there. Always. Sometimes watching, often times looking away. He would work so hard on his many little projects, presenting them to you two as if the greatest kill on the greatest hunt. You would give him cheek-kisses as reward and he’d be so joyous he’d happily sit with you both just to remain close the rest of the time.

With boots you nudge aside broken jars and wind-up toys. Stained mechanic blueprints and floor boards. All to get to the one new thing in the room…a workman’s table covered in more sketches. Some for toys, some for the house, and many for the machine Thomas described back in America. He made himself an office, a respite. His devotion to his project was whole and genuine. His devotion to the girl must’ve been equally so. No wonder he never made it out alive.

“Oh Thomas…” You sigh, the house groans and bleeds. “Why didn’t you accept my offer, you poor fool?” You know why. You go to her room next.

It’s a massacre. Living creatures feed on dead ones, glass and blood spatter the floor, scorch marks spread towards the bed due to an unattended fireplace. It’s a curse this place didn’t burn to the ground as it sunk.

At Lucille’s mirror you pull pins from your hair, jab them into the frame for safe-keeping. Fingers undo coat, toss it across bed…dust and moths plume at the disturbance, but you attend the high collar of your gown. The house sighs, crimson weeps from the walls, as you spin and tip yourself back onto the bed. It wails and even you give up a cough as the air attempts a choke.

You watch moths skitter on the ceiling, swat flies from their attempt to pester, then sink hands into black and blue sheets. Your eyes slide closed as you fall back on memories. The childhood ones where you all explored and shared each other, finding a tenuous balance between enjoyment and jealousy, pleasure and pain. The more recent ones…the ones in America with just Thomas.

Stale blood and dust fill your nostrils on the inhale, his name falls out on the exhale. You think on his strikingly sad eyes, that quiver of his lips, as he’d begun to fall apart before you. Hand brushes across your neck and chest, remembering his hands. His teeth, his lips, his tongue as it did what even reluctant predators do…lap up the blood. A breeze curls at the hem of your dress, runs gooseflesh up your legs.

He’s there, but you don’t see him. Even if you were to open your eyes, you wouldn’t. Can’t. He doesn’t want you to…for shame, for fear of startling you, for his inability to apologize. He shifts between regret at dismissing your warning, your offer, and pure desire to be in the world of the living with you once more.

Layer by layer you gather skirt up around your hips, exposing yourself to the room. The house. Him. “Thomas…” you sigh, letting fingers burrow into soft curls, just brushing clit. You imagine his fingers teasing you, his hands spreading you as you set legs all the wider apart. There’s a sigh in the house that you swear sounds like him…Him calling to you. “Thomas,” you call back as chilled air caresses you again.

Thomas watches, wishing he could come back to you. For you. To join in the pleasures you indulge in now and ones that will surely come after. He moves closer, watches you shudder as if touched by him. He whispers your name again and this time you arch.

It’s not enough; you shift back, fully on the bed, bend and spread legs like the wings of a butterfly…or a moth. Fingers return to clit, encircle and rub, as your other hand slips past to graze entrance. It catches the first trickle of juices, spreads them up and back down as you increase pressure on that sensitive bundle of nerves buried in public hair.

Memories of your last time together cling to the spirit and, while unable to get aroused as the living do, he still feels it. The tingles of pleasure throughout, that tension of muscles, how he’d overheat in the throes of passion. He feels it all even as his new form lacks the signs of arousal. Thomas reaches out to touch…

You give a cry as pure ice hits your thigh, shocks a flood from your core before you slip two fingers inside. You imagine Thomas’ eager tongue dipping in, swallowing you down, as you direct him by the hair. You can picture him, with focus you can almost sense him in the room - the smell of his cologne, the sound of his panting, even the feel of his soft skin against yours are all there, somewhere, begging to be with you now.

If only he could enjoy the wantonness of you. Fingers working fast, furious, over your clit as others dive into glistening wet cunt. Two fingers, then three as you groan and gasp. Tentatively he moves closer, shifts over you. A black moth lands between your breasts and you bite lip so hard it leaks blood. He whispers your name in your ear and the familiar growl of it seems to reach you.

“Thomas…fu-fu…” Your legs snap close on your own hands like a trap, toes curl, as sheer will drives you past the edge and over it. Your hips lift high, sex brushes freezing air, and you to cry out a string of curses as the orgasm floods hands, thighs, backside, dress, and bed. You land in a puddle of yourself, curl up to the side as the moth flutters off. “Fuck…” you shake out groans, lick bleeding lip, then sigh. “Thomas…fuck….”

He knows it’s as much a curse at him as it is for him. He settles beside you, watches your ribs rapidly rise and fall, hears a single sob of his name. The peace doesn’t last long; you sit up, breathe deep, and then let out a blood-curdling scream of rage. If only he could hold you, tell you it’s okay…That it’ll be okay.

Flying from the bed you smash the mirror to pieces with bare fists before going to the vanity next, tossing it completely. The only thing that stops your rampage is Lucille’s entomology toolbox. Scissors and knives and pins…and women’s hair all braided and wound up. Delicate fingers pluck out a pair of scissors with hairs caught between blades before you shove the rest to crash and splinter on the floor.

_No. Don’t._ He begs as you spread blades like you did thighs. Dangerously wide. His eyes flash away as you run finger across, leaving a thin line of blood behind. You set a blade to your arm, then close both with a flick of your hand and set point to your chest. _Please don’t. Don’t._

You take a deep breath, but change your mind. Death is the easy route. You bury the scissors deep into the wall, then pull out to watch the crimson flow from the wound. You impale again; this time you leave it in. Wet clay oozes around the weapon. Was this what Thomas looked like at Lucille’s hand? An impotent, stunned, slow-bleeding thing?

Thomas sighs with you, looks on as you gather your coat, pin up your hair, and flit out of the room. The only way to keep up with your glide through the house is to dissipate, watch everything at once. Watch you flutter on as gravity carries the remnants of your arousal down into your boots, as moths pester you to stay and scarlet clay slicks everything in attempt to delay your exit.

Once back outside you take a deep breath, gather yourself together and readjust your social mask. A sweet smile is forced on as you approach the carriage. Then something gleams out the corner of your eye and finally earns the house its win over your determination to leave immediately.

Stepping off the bloody path into raw muck you find it. A ruby ring. The Sharpe ring; the one Beatrice Sharpe once wore, then Lucille. The one you heard the girl wore after marrying Thomas only to lose it in battle. Your smile goes genuine as you crouch farther into clotted clay and pluck it from its spot. It looks rotted, black and red, but a wipe of your dress and it proves as stunning as ever.

You slip it onto your finger…the perfect parting gift. The house seems to shudder, groan, in anger. This ring is not yours to take.

The man you’d loved, the one who loves you still, looks on, forlorn. That ring should’ve been yours from the start, he can only hope it will not curse you to the same life and death as Lucille and himself now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am aware the tenses of the stories change. They were written at two different times and, in the end, I rather enjoyed that the initial piece (what could have been) was past tense and this piece (what is) is present tense.


End file.
